Designers, self included, are all in a huff about the iOS 7 announcement yesterday. A curation of our rants live here: http://designerscomplaining.tumblr.com/.
Many are critiquing the aesthetic choices and departure too from their famously skeuomorphic designs. Others are upset by the color choices look saying they look too much like a children’s candyland. And many agree it looks like a pages from Windows, Android and Myspace playbooks. Personally, I’d just like to see some consistency. In these screens alone I can count 5 different styles of icons. I like many others, agree we’ll have to see it in action to have any kind of definitive opinions.
Historically Apple ran like a creative dictatorship. Decisions were made top down and usually were quite good decisions. Many designers looked to Apple and Steve Jobs for a flashlight pointing us towards the future of design innovation. That’s what designers used to do.
But, Apple designers no longer have a direct line to god. Perhaps their new process is similar to what the rest of us have been doing all along. Prototyping. It looks something like this: 1. Design something that might work 2. put it out in the world 3. listen to what people say 4. iterate like crazy 5. ship as soon as humanly possible.
Perhaps the iOS designs look unfinished and unsure because they are. Call me crazy but is Apple user testing?
1 reply on “Apple designers – just like the rest of us”
Sure seems like what you’ve described… The fact that they’ve even put out Beta products (e.g. Messages, Siri, Maps) in recent times reinforces the notion of testing and learning in the wild.